relativity - What would happen if the light-speed was higher?

I came across a rather interesting passage in a book attempting to debunk Darwin's Theory of Evolution from a Christian viewpoint. One thing the book suggested, was that various scientific ways to measure age of fossils and rocks could not be trusted, because they assume that the rate of decay to be constant - something the book the suggest may not be the case. I assuming it's referring to C-14 dating and similar methods...

The book then quote "an exciting theory(sic) in this context" by Barry Setterfield and Trevor Norman that the speed of light may not always have been constant. That they by comparing 160 measurements of the speed of light from the 1600's all the way to today (2000), got results that suggested that "the speed of light 8000 years ago ("surprisingly", just around the time God's supposedly created the Earth and then the universe...), was 10^7 times higher than what it is today". And according to the book; this change in the speed of light would change the decay-rate, thus invalidating the result of C-14 dating.

Personally, I think the change in "measured" c is rather due to initial wrong assumptions (eg. "the ether"), and measuring-errors due to primitive technology (especially if we start in 1600) - but what do I know...?

So, just out of curiosity; what would happen if the speed of light was 10^7 higher than it is?

• Would an increase of the speed of light change decay-rates?


• How would the decay-rate - and results depending on it (like C-14 dainging) - change?


• Would it change time - eg. would the length of a second increase?


• What other manifestation would such a huge increase in the speed of light cause (in physics)? Anything devastating and cataclysmic?


• What would happen if the increase was (a lot) less - and perhaps more survivable - which effects would it have on our lives?

I could perhaps also add that I once read a book trying to explain relativity and such to a layman in very simple terms, using alternate worlds with changed physics and then exploring what the result would be. In one of these worlds the speed of light was a lot less - so the books hero could actually bike fast enough to get the effect of closing in on c... and taking the train, caused time-distortion effects for the passengers (like "twin-in-rocked-going-close-to-c-doesn't-age" paradox).

As a side-note; the author of the book "debunking evolution", seems to have shifted to writing fantasy-books for kids/young-adults - probably a much better use of his "talents"...